Bethesda, MD – February 24, 2011 – This week, LibLime brought 4 new Texas libraries live on Koha. These libraries are all members of the Big Country Library System (BCLS).

BCLS now has 25 member libraries all using Koha to support their daily workflows. Their Koha membership continues to grow as the Consortium is working with many more Texas libraries to migrate them from their costly, proprietary systems onto the BCLS Koha Union Catalog platform. Their 4 new Koha libraries are:

Carnegie Library of Ballinger in Ballinger

Haskell County Library in Haskell

Shackelford County Library in Albany

Sutton County Library in Sonora

With these new members, the BCLS Koha Union Catalog now includes over 355,000 MARC bibliographic records.

About LibLime, a division of PTFS
LibLime, a division of PTFS, is the global leader in Koha support. LibLime provides consulting, implementation, data migration, training, development, and maintenance/hosting services for Koha in libraries of all types and sizes. PTFS is the developer of the world’s leading digital content management software, ArchivalWare, and also specializes in library staffing requirements, digitization, and systems integration. For more information, see http://liblime.com or http://ptfs.com orhttp://archivalware.net.

Bethesda, MD – February 25, 2011 – This week, LibLime brought 4 new Texas libraries live on Koha. These libraries are all members of the Big Country Library System (BCLS).

BCLS now has 25 member libraries all using Koha to support their daily workflows. Their Koha membership continues to grow as the Consortium is working with many more Texas libraries to migrate them from their costly, proprietary systems onto the BCLS Koha Union Catalog platform. Their 4 new Koha libraries are:

Carnegie Library of Ballinger in Ballinger

Haskell County Library in Haskell

Shackelford County Library in Albany

Sutton County Library in Sonora

With these new members, the BCLS Koha Union Catalog now includes over 355,000 MARC bibliographic records.

About LibLime, a division of PTFS
LibLime, a division of PTFS, is the global leader in Koha support. LibLime provides consulting, implementation, data migration, training, development, and maintenance/hosting services for Koha in libraries of all types and sizes. PTFS is the developer of the world’s leading digital content management software, ArchivalWare, and also specializes in library staffing requirements, digitization, and systems integration. For more information, see http://liblime.com or http://ptfs.com orhttp://archivalware.net.

Essays from Leading Scholars and Economists to be Added to Gale Resource

Farmington Hills, Mich., Feb. 22, 2011 — Gale, part of Cengage Learning, today announced a unique partnership with the Economics for Equity and Environment (E3 Network), a national network of more than 200 economists whose applied research supports active environmental protection. To help enhance Gale’s GREENR resource, prominent E3 Network scholars and economists will be contributing essays on aspects of the environment from an economics and policy perspective. The essays will be added to GREENR over the course of 2011.

“Gale’s collaboration with the E3 Network demonstrates our shared strategy to focus on environmental debates from a policy and economics standpoint to provide unparalleled value for scholars and students in the environmental and social sciences,” said Jim Draper, vice president and publisher, Gale.

“Providing a clear understanding of the economics of environmental issues is the goal of E3 Network economists,” said Kristen Sheeran, executive director, E3 Network. “This partnership brings that expertise and commitment to the next generation of social science and environmental studies researchers.”

E3 Network scholars will contribute 10 essays targeted to college-level researchers over the course of the year. Additionally, E3 Network scholars will be writing valuable annotated bibliographies on environmental topics that will help guide students of sustainability, economics or public policy to the foundational literature and leading scholarship in their field.

The essays and annotated bibliographies focus on student and teacher needs in the classroom, and will help students understand the complex scholarly debates in which they are just beginning to take part.

The first three essays in the series are currently available to GREENR customers, including:

Future essays will cover the topics of forest carbon and ecosystem services, among others.

In addition, later this month Gale will provide complimentary access via the GREENR website (http://www.gale.cengage.com/greenr/) to an annotated bibliography on green jobs created by the E3 Network. The annotated bibliography includes a list of influential publications reflecting the evolution of the relationship between green jobs and the environment, culminating in the most recent reports and analyses of green careers.

About Cengage Learning and Gale
Cengage Learning is a leading provider of innovative teaching, learning and research solutions for the academic, professional and library markets worldwide. Gale, part of Cengage Learning, serves the world's information and education needs through its vast and dynamic content pools, which are used by students and consumers in their libraries, schools and on the Internet. It is best known for the accuracy, breadth and convenience of its data, addressing all types of information needs – from homework help to health questions to business profiles – in a variety of formats. For more information, visit www.cengage.com or www.gale.cengage.com.

IPSWICH, Mass. — February 22, 2011 — EBSCO Publishing (EBSCO) has released 24 new eBook subject sets. The subject sets are part of a rapidly growing collection of eBooks that are offered in convenient collections grouped by subject matter.

Subject sets are a prepackaged set of titles chosen specifically for their subject appeal. The collection development team of librarians and collection specialists use their expertise and knowledge to create collections and sets for libraries. Director of Content Collections for EBSCO Publishing Eve-Marie Miller says some of the recent collections were created with the international markets in mind. “While subject sets are always available to libraries worldwide, with this round of sets we specifically wanted to showcase some of our great content that appeals to an international audience. These new sets were developed in consultation with our international teams and are tailored to help meet the needs and interests of libraries around the world.”

Twenty-four New Subject Sets
By offering the subject sets at a low price point, libraries are provided with an easy and convenient way to begin an eBook collection. Subject sets from EBSCO include titles published within the past three years, offering timely, updated information. The subject sets have no duplication among current or past offerings. The 24 new subject sets that are now available include:

Subject sets are just one of the ways libraries can select their eBooks on EBSCOhost®. Other options for content selection include custom collections and Patron Driven Acquisition. Custom collections allow libraries to work with EBSCO’s collection development team to develop collections for any subject, language or content type. Patron Drive Acquisition allows libraries to establish a collection of titles for patrons based on patron usage.

eBooks on EBSCOhost
eBooks on EBSCOhost offers nearly 300,000 eBooks and audiobooks. EBSCO is proactively soliciting new content in key areas and approximately 5,000 new titles are expected to be added each month. In April EBSCO will release a preview of eBooks on EBSCOhost with a full migration to the EBSCOhost platform expected by July.

About EBSCO Publishing
EBSCO Publishing is the world’s premier database aggregator, offering a suite of more than 300 full-text and secondary research databases. Through a library of tens of thousands of full-text journals, magazines, books, monographs, reports and various other publication types from renowned publishers, EBSCO serves the content needs of all researchers (Academic, Medical, K-12, Public Library, Corporate, Government, etc.). The company’s product lines include proprietary databases such as Academic Search™, Business Source®, CINAHL®, DynaMed™, Literary Reference Center™, MasterFILE™, NoveList®, SocINDEX™ and SPORTDiscus™ as well as dozens of leading licensed databases such as ATLA Religion Database™, EconLit, Inspec®, MEDLINE®, MLA International Bibliography, NISC™, The Philosopher’s Index™, PsycARTICLES®, PsycINFO® and RILM™. Databases are powered by EBSCOhost®, the most-used for-fee electronic resource in libraries around the world. EBSCO is the provider of EBSCO Discovery Service™ a core collection of locally-indexed metadata creating a unified index of an institution’s resources within a single, customizable search point providing everything the researcher needs in one place—fast, simple access to the library’s full text content, deeper indexing and more full-text searching of more journals and magazines than any other discovery service (www.ebscohost.com/discovery). For more information, visit the EBSCO Publishing Web site at: www.ebscohost.com, or contact: information@ebscohost.com.

EBSCO Publishing is a division of EBSCO Industries Inc., one of the largest privately held companies in the United States.
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Brandon Regional Health Authority Partners with ByWater Solutions for Koha Support and Implementation

ByWater Solutions, an open source community supporter and official Koha support company, announced today that the Brandon Regional Health Authority, of Brandon, Manitoba, has partnered with them for their implementation and support of the Koha ILS.

The library's Koha installation is scheduled to go live in the beginning of March, and they have partnered with ByWater Solutions for ongoing support services.

Robert Kowaluk, Library Technician of the Health Resource Centre, commented on their move to Koha with support from ByWater Solutions:

"The Health Resource Centre Library picked Koha after an exhaustive consideration of all ILS options. In the end, it was Koha’s robustness and scalability that led us to choose this product. We wanted something stable that allowed room for growth." He continues; "The decision to partner with ByWater Solutions was made after consulting with other Koha libraries. Simply put, we liked what we heard. We were also suitably impressed with ByWater’s very vocal commitment to free and open source software"

Brendan Gallagher, CEO of ByWater stated: "Brandon Regional Health Authority is ByWater Solutions' first Canadian library and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to help transition their Health Resource Centre to Koha. We look forward to a long and productive relationship with Robert and the staff at Brandon RHA."

The Brandon Regional Health Authority Health Resource Centre is slated to go live in early March of 2011.

About Brandon Regional Health Center:
The Brandon RHA is fully accredited and offers a wide range of health services and
programs to the citizens of Brandon and the rural municipalities of Cornwallis, Elton
and Whitehead, along with being a regional referral centre for the "Westman " area.
The RHA Board and over 2400 staff are committed to providing the utmost in quality health care. For more information please visit: http://www.brandonrha.mb.ca/en/

About Koha:
Koha is the first open-source Integrated Library System (ILS). In use worldwide, its development is steered by a growing community of libraries collaborating to achieve their technology goals. Koha's impressive feature set continues to evolve and expand to meet the needs of its user base. It includes modules for circulation, cataloging, acquisitions, serials, reserves, patron management, branch relationships, and more.

Koha’s OPAC, circulation, management and self-checkout interfaces are all based on standards-compliant World Wide Web technologies--XHTML, CSS and Javascript--making Koha a truly platform-independent solution. Koha is distributed under the open-source General Public License (GPL). For more information about Koha, please visit: http://www.koha-community.org

About ByWater Solutions:
With over 10 years of experience, ByWater Solutions offers customized hosting, data migration, configuration, installation, training, support options and development of enterprise class open-source library systems. Offering a 24/7 technical helpline, ByWater Solutions’ clients have the support system they need to make their software work for them. ByWater Solutions pledges to share 100% of all developed code to the Koha community for the strengthening and advancement of the Koha ILS. For more information about ByWater Solutions, please visit: http://www.bywatersolutions.com